


canon // echo

by imperiality



Series: Hope . . Have (Works Inspired by Batmorphy) [4]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: But you'll have to let me know about that one, Canon Compliant, F/M, Is the central focus, Light Angst, Loss, More sad than the ones before, Prose Poem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2017-11-22
Packaged: 2019-02-05 03:37:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12786111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imperiality/pseuds/imperiality
Summary: Some things are kinder to lose than othersLoss is the stain and timeline of Allura's life





	canon // echo

**Author's Note:**

> This makes the 4th in the writings inspired by[ batmorphy](https://batmorphy.tumblr.com). on tumblr :O  [ (With this picture to be exact)](https://batmorphy.tumblr.com/post/167279494419/sharing)

There’s a lot of loss that Allura’s had the good pleasure of shaking hands with. In fact, she may as well have learned all her networking from the anguish she’s met. She remembers every name and face.

The first that always comes to mind is the fading, flickering image of her mother. Beautiful and fortified her face and voice and warmth no longer cradle Allura’s memories. 

She needs them to cradle her now.

She needs her mother’s loving voice. She needs her mother’s tender arms. She needs her mother to see just who Allura’s become and say she’s proud.

Allura is already surrounded by her father’s pride.

His pride and honor live on in the Lions. (Even if she’s still battling with forgiveness about Red.) It lives on in the castle that Allura now charges. Though she’s surrounded and painted by his foresight of posterity, she’s never felt father from him.

_I need your voice now more than ever, father._

She lost her mother. She lost her father. She woke from chemical slumber to greet ghosts by the thousands of people left behind.

_She’s lost her home._

Her father's advisors come to mind. Sometimes their smiles stretched thinner than others, but they never did her any wrong. Her childhood friends in their innocent ebullience, she wishes she could recall their laugh. (She wishes she recognized herself from her youth.)

The loss of her people ages her the most. On Allura’s shoulders lie the mantles, crests and heirlooms of families scarce to be counted.

Who is she that only her crest be left remaining?

Her home-people- her home-planet- she can never kiss again.

_She can never kiss again._

To have and to hold, Allura knows no longer. What does she have but grief. What can she hold but rage.

She’s held her paladins, that much is true. She’s held them, and would hold them more if they actually cared to be held. Lance takes every fleeting embrace he can, but he feels too fluid to her. Hunk is solid, sure and assured… but not enough. Too much. Pidge is technical, not tactile. Her kind refusals of touch shock Allura no more, but hurt no less.

Allura doesn’t dare approach Shiro exclusively. Should she hold him, she’d be tempted to put together all his missing parts, but the knows she cannot, must not heal a man that broken. (He needs intimacy, deliberate and decided, but only by someone who can handle the splinters.)

The Lions’ muzzles are cruel in their coldness. She can’t really…”hold” them, so she’ll pet their metal bodies, connect her mind and magic to each, but they only surge Allura with the wrong kind of excitement.

_Show me what you love._

Through their link, each lion will show her landscapes diverse, vast and unending. Yellow buries himself under sifting sands of blinding desert. (Allura almost feels the frenzied sands on her skin.) Green shares restless visions of hopping from tree to tree in bustling jungle canopies. _She hopes to never come back down_. But if she wants to see into Blue, she must. So Allura dismounts from spindling leaves, vines and branches to descend. 

Blue feels no gaining pressure as Allura is taken to waters deep and pure. The stillness surprises her, and it’s all she can do to remind herself she’ll breath _air_ , not water down her lungs. 

Black takes her to the stars. That link takes the longest to break.

Red… Red has always been a force with which to be reckoned. But when the Lion takes Allura to volcanos’ hearts, fires’ flames _heat unmatched_ \- Allura can’t leave fast enough.

All the Lions show her freedom.

The only thing she felt from Red is the next ultimate betrayal. (Jealousy at Lance she will not let become her, but another loss by her father’s hand she will not let ensue her.)

She, in _theory_ , could still belong to her mother. She could still in theory belong to her father. In theory, she’s still for Altea. In theory Red is still her legacy. Theoretically.

Her parents were taken. Her people were taken. Her planet, her lion was taken. Her bloody _joy was taken from her and_ -

 _What else does she need to_ ** _lose_**?

Keith crouches with her. He is her bulwark, her cornerstone and he eschews her loneliness.

This is a loss for which she can finally be thankful.

With trembling hands she paws down his chest, down his arms and they are still. Still in her sniveling. Still in the perpetual darkness. Still with each other, long after her breathing’s evened.

Keith doesn’t bother asking of her afflictions, knowing full well to wait for her soliloquizing in natural time.

In the blink of an eye or the twinkle of a star or the flush of a heart, a new day will come and pass. Allura thinks no more of her loss until such a day will dawn again. Or, thinks no more until the next time Lance presents the team with his infamous milkshakes. She thinks no more of it until the paladins all have a beverage in hand, and Keith (corners) communes with her next.

(She must be the cream in Keith’s cup, for how else would she be feeling her _self_ being sipped away?)

_What do you want me to say, Keith._

He answers honestly. _Only whatever you want to tell me._

Frankly, she’s already told him everything that’s needed saying at least thrice over. Anything else worth saying she’s simply too tired to say.

Which works just fine for Keith, since he’s never believed occupying empty space with idle chat. If she’s really conveyed to him all she wants to, he’ll let them drink in commiserative silence. 

After that interaction, Allura loses another piece of her awkwardness with Keith. He’s ever more handsome in his Marmora suit. He’s ever more sleek in his countenance. He’s ever more bold in the way he looks at Allura, and she doesn’t know how she let awkwardness even have room to intercede between them. 

His missions divide them. The nights unite them. If it wasn’t awkwardness before, it’s something like dissent that keeps him from her now.  

(He doesn’t mean to do it.)

(She couldn’t care less if he meant to or not, really. It’s already been done. He’s the one that keeps choosing the “else”. The “other”. The Blades. The paladins are the ones remaining to carry his slack.)

Keith would like to say that mornings were the times their truth is unveiled, but that just can’t work. They have no mornings to work within or without his favor. It’s all only _void_. It’s the night instead that illuminates all secrets obscured.

Evening hours cast a spell over Allura, and she becomes an all new demon Keith has no business sanctifying. He knows better than to try. So wisely, he’ll curl his lips, watch her hips and hang on for the ride.

_I can’t afford to lose you, too._

And she is a _trip_.

_Allura, I’m not going to make promises so insultingly impossible to keep._

_And I’m not asking you to._ She creeps from behind him, drapes a blanket over them both, and Keith is almost seduced into dismounting. The ride isn’t over yet though, so he still hangs on tight. 

 _What’s that for_? he looks up to the throw.

_Us._

He hums. _Not who; what._

 _It’s for us, tonight_. She settles herself right next to him. _We have the nastiest habit of falling asleep in the most unfortunate places after our conversations_. She tucks them closer and closer. _So tonight will be the first of all, outside our rooms that is, that we won’t be freezing._ She tilts her head on his shoulder.

He pulls down his hood.

Allura initiates.

_I’m sorry._

_Why?_

A sigh slips from her, subconscious. _I just… I miss you. You’re gone so much. And there’s so much to do. We’re spread so thin. I’m losing my patience, I know I am. All I want-_ her breath hitches _. I just want to hold. And to be held._

**I can’t keep losing!**

Keith finally leans his head over Allura’s.

_Maybe you’ve lost family. Maybe you’ve lost your home, but. Maybe not. Not really. Because no matter how much time has passed, no matter how far you go or how many new people you meet, you’ll never lose where you came from._

Allura stiffens.

_You’ll never lose the legacy set before you by King Alfor, princess. You’ll never lose your destiny. You’re an embodiment of culture and memory, and no one can take that from you._

Allura _loses it_.

Clutching her stomach, hands wrapped around her torso and bowing herself down she cries out for the spirits that still haunt her wake.

“You don’t understand this loss, Keith!” Her tears scald her eyes. “Do you understand how it feels watching your home, your whole planet burn? It is only by arbitrary grace that I can’t recall their screams. Do you understand the- the exquisite betrayal so sharp as this? Zarkon was so trusted, so honored, so _loved_ by my father, yet it was by his hand that we burned. It was by his hand that my father has died. It was by _his_ hand that this war has waged for so long and I am _so_ ** _tired_** , Keith!”

Breath evades her as she gasps tightly _tightly_.

She kneels, and Keith moves up with her. He rests his hands on her shoulders, but consolation is for the hopeful.

Allura is so. Damn. Tired.

“I’ll never hear my mother’s voice again for as long as I live. She only got to live with me for an even shorter time, and every day that passes makes it hard for me to remember her gentility. How did she use to laugh, Keith? How fond was her gaze at my father in their love. I’ll never see my father again. My father.”

Her tears come too fast and too heavy for Keith to brush them away. He lets them fall.

“What all has my father given? What all did my father have to see? Until his dying breath, he gave everything of himself to his people, his goal. His friends. He saw this betrayal, this fall, this death first hand. He never lived to see justice. Where was his hope?”

_What a legacy it is indeed, to never be able to repay all that her father gave!_

“Altea was so beautiful. It was so beautiful. Our skies were always rich and bright. There were always flowers in bloom. Never will I step foot on that ground again. Never again will I see those flowers in bloom. I’ll never hold Altean soil in my hands again.

“Tell me, Keith. How does the memory live on. In what way will I make my father proud. **_Tell me_**!”

She _wails_.

Keith cups a hand behind her neck, and holds her through her distress.

(He knew there were things she left unsaid. Just because she sequesters them to herself, doesn’t mean they’re not priceless to him.)

Pained and long-suffering, Allura’s weeping is manumitted from her.

He sits with her until her sobbing subsides. She hides with and within him until her breathing calms. Pressing his hand to Allura’s chest, he whispers something familiar to follow.

_Do you understand, Keith?_

And maybe he doesn’t understand it all, but yes. Yes he does understand. 

He understands home. He understands family. He understands wanting to make a father proud.

He understands loss, too.

He understands loss far more intimately than he ever wants Allura to know.

So instead he’ll simply wrap her in himself then breath together. Commiserate together. Hope together.

(That night, they both share their love of loss of borders.)

Loss, in all its beauty and tragedy, is seeming to become them.

**Author's Note:**

> betas coming later yadda yadda you know the drill~
> 
> If y'all want to swing by [my Tumblr for a little while,](https://chickadeecrowns.tumblr.com) well I'm alright with that too :*


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